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At the same time I would very much like you to tell, if your favourite playlist editor is any 'CLEVER' !

My music collection is some 40.000 files, and whenever I wanted to create a playlist, I ran into the same kind of problems: some editors don't support drag&drop from Explorer, or don't remember what files I have, so they need to load and read the content of 40.000 files each time I open the program (what an extreme waste of time!), or they are only able to list the files in the same order the files were added (stupid stupid stupid!), or they won't tell the duration of my playlist (= important feature!), or some other mis-features I cannot remember right now.

Edited:

But this thread should not be about my need (only), but about the general question:What's the Best PlayList Editor out there? , and why?

Create playlists of your favorite music in seconds. Supports drag and drop, readout of tags from all media files, a large number of predefined file types, user-defined file types, open and edit existing playlists, etc.

Playlist Creator is very fine because it is so easy to use. In many ways I think this Michael is just the kind of sodtware author that I like the best. For my own needs I have chosen to look for another tool as this one doesn't tell the accumulated play-time, 'duration'. But otherwise a thumb up:

Also, my own PlayTime will parse a playlist file and show the total time of the list. Depending on what you want out of a playlist editor application, perhaps I can extend PlayTime (or create an entirely new app) to cover your needs.

For my personally situation, I will probably not use it. The very simple reason is, that each time that I started to create a playlist, I always stopped during the process, and deleted the outcome (the reasons being those that gave the idea to this thread) = I don't yet have any playlists!

Have you checked out J. River Media Center yet? It has its share of problems, but it does all the things you listed (drag and drop from explorer, once the songs are in the library they'll stay there (it also updates very quickly), you can rearrange the playlist, and it shows the total time and file size).

- no, it never crossed my mind. I was kind of thinking "media", not 'playlists'.

Quote

Music, Images and Video in one program with all the tools to manage and enjoy them. All the ripping, burning, importing, playlisting, and syncing you expect from a jukebox application, and much, much more...

Having read the *Complete Feature List*, I must say it sounds as if it is very capable of almost everything. But then again, at $50 I also would expect quite a lot. But I think I first will download the old but free version 12, and have a look.

I want to generate a playlist for each Album (sorted by Track Number, not Track Title) and have the playlist reside in the Album's Folder. Ideally, I'd like to point it at the top most Folder and let t do it's thing recursively

I took a look at Playlist Creator 3.6 and it did everything I wanted except that the playlist it generates sorts the songs by Track Title, I want it to sort by Track Number. I've dropped the author a note on this.

Then I found this Mp3ListShellEx which allows for sorting the list by Track Number, but you've got to "touch" each Album Folder to select files then generate playlist.

Then I came across SnapPlay/SnapList which appears to do what I need. Last night when I tried to run the program I got an App Can't Load error, but today on a different machine it loads ok. Unfortunately this machine doesn't have the mp3 library, will try again tonight.

I realize that my needs are not the same as yours, but this is the only thread I could find that dealt with generating playlists.

Within the last couple of weeks I have deleted 2.300 album playlists, each placed inside the respective album's folder, each list's content sorted per track number, - because I hated them!

I hear you, and realize that my current "need" is a bit out of the ordinary. I've returned my attention to Music Collector and it has a feature for Linking a playlist with an Album, which is why I started looking for this type of tool.

The SnapPlay looks like it can do the job, but it still fails to launch on my system at home, have dropped the author a note.

Re: your original post

You mentioned the problem of having to re-read your library everytime you wanted to generate a playlist, not sure but you might want to look for something that builds a media library within the program. Foobar does this, but I've only started to explore it. I've also seen mention of a couple of other programs that claimed this feature but I couldn't point you to anything specific.

I missed that choice in the menu and went thru Contact Us - just came back from the Bug Report message drop and I don't think it's a good sign that the program in question is not among those in the drop-down list of programs being monitored by the author. We'll see...

RE: the rebate from CollectorzThanks for the tip but I've been a long time user of a number of Collectorz' programs and fall under the free upgrade cutoff date.

I have just installed J. River Media Center 14.0.127 and is sitting looking at the 'importing' meter: approx 4 files per second, in bundles of 10.000. Well, bundles, I HOPE; the meter simply stopped at 10.000. I sure expect it to start again when the first bundle has been imported.

I am not impressed with the (lack of) speed. This way it will take hours before my 60.000 audio files are imported. They all try to make these specialist programs, but in the end any standard program from Microsoft is faster to use.

- no, Dormouse, I was upset; I meant 'any program'. And now I am even more upset.---

The River has run out of the building. (??)

I watched a movie when J. River was 'importing'. It didn't manage to find the music folder on the D drive, only the one on the C drive. I assume it would have been possible for me to navigate it to the D drive collection, but I didn't try, because when I finally returned to my computer I realized the bottom line was telling that the program now was re-writing the tags! "Re-writing the tags"?! I swear I never asked it to do anything with the tags other than to READ them!! Well, of course I closed the program at once, and removed it from my computer. Maybe it would have proven itself after some time, but I will not give it the chance when the very first thing it does with my music is to re-write the tags without asking or even telling me in advance.

I've never used 14. Just the free version 12. That's never attempted to rewrite tags; and I always told it where I wanted to look (except for pure Search programs, I don't want programs looking around my computer at will).

because when I finally returned to my computer I realized the bottom line was telling that the program now was re-writing the tags!

Wow. If a program EVER did that to my files without my express permission, I would be PISSED OFF. I'm am a huge stickler for correct tags and have spent, over the years, countless hours tagging my files how I want them tagged. As for the scanning taking hours, that's not cool either. I've written a database function into Trout that takes only around 50 minutes to scan my entire collection (~87,000 files) and that's whilst scanning over my local LAN since my music is stored on a file server. It would be even quicker if my files were on a local drive.

Curt, did you ever hear back from Playlist Creator's author about your request to add the total play time for a playlist?